A Filipina Culinary Icon’s Legacy

Cookbook author, editor-in- chief, and food writer Nina Daza Puyat is the daughter of culinary legend Nora Daza, whom gourmets remember as a cooking show host and cookbook author. Nora is also the founder of Aux Iles Philippines, the first Filipino restaurant in Paris, Maharlika, the first Filipino fine dining restaurant in New York, and Au Bon Vivant, the first authentic French fine dining restaurant in Manila.

According to Nina, her mom’s Crêpe Aux Fruits de Mer or Lumpiang Laman Dagat was one of the more popular dishes at her mom’s restaurant, and she loves how it has what she laughingly calls a “dual citizenship.” At Au Bon Vivant, the dish was known as Crêpe Au Fruits de Mer, while in Aux Iles Philippines, it was called Lumpiang Laman Dagat.

Nina Daza-Puyat with her own version of her mom’s specialty dish, the Crêpe Aux Fruits de Mer.

To this day, Nina honors her mother by continuing to cook her recipes. She tells us that the Crêpe Aux Fruits de Mer is of those dishes that her family enjoys preparing for special occassions. “It’s also a dish that’s easy to prepare and something that the whole family can cook together. They can gather around the table and form an assembly line to wrap and do the breading procedure together,” she shares.

Through her family’s shared passion for food, Nina says that she gets to keep her mom’s memory and legacy alive. “Almost every time we have it [Crêpe Aux Fruits de Mer],” Nina shares, “I end up telling my children about their Lola Nora, and how she so cleverly used one dish to represent two cuisines. Isn’t that a beautiful story that they can also tell their own families someday?”

It is, indeed!

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Want to learn how to make Nora Daza’s Crêpe Aux Fruits de Mer? Read the full article that appears in the November 2018 issue of My Pope Philippines. Text by Margaux Salcedo. Photos by Jar Concengco.

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